Interview: Ani Difranco (Pt. 2)

Interview: Ani Difranco (Pt. 2)

Genre : More Music

Type: News

Author : Super Admin

Date : Tue, 23 Dec 2008

I always think it’s interesting when songwriters who you know are happily married or in longtime healthy relationships keep churning out tragic relationship songs. They must have deep pools to draw from.

[Laughs] Yeah, right–and it’s interesting, too, how people crave that. When I first got together with my partner–who’s now my baby daddy and co-producer of this record–he pegged me right away. He said, “You listen to too much sad music. That’s what’s wrong with you.” And he started making me Jackson 5 compilations–and, I swear to God, it was like “Wow, whew, you’re right! I feel better!” [Laughs]

And then just living in New Orleans really made me realize, wow, white people are just looking for shit to whine about, aren’t we? [Laughs] And I’m another whiny white kid with a guitar.

You’ve said in the past that you haven’t always been satisfied in hindsight with how you’ve captured yourself on studio albums. Red Letter Year was made over the course of a couple years, which is a longer time than a lot of those older albums. Did slowing the process help toward the end of capturing yourself in a truer fashion?

Yes, immensely. And having super high-caliber help in the studio is also sort of a new thing on this record. I’ve never had a co-producer in this way and had the luxury of just being “the artist.” So, yeah, I feel like this record will stand up as a better representation of these songs than other past efforts.

You dare to say “I can’t support the troops” on a song, which I thought was very brave and bold. That’s kind of the final frontier of political incorrectness. Have you gotten response about that line? Has it proved to be controversial?

Well, see, that’s the brave part–then the stupid part is when I elaborate and talk about that line on stage. [Laughs] I really dig myself a hole there. No, no reactions directly back to me. I stay very far away from the Internet and the chorus. But, yeah, you picked it–if there’s any line on the whole record that I’m very aware I’m not supposed to be saying, it’s that one. It’s a queasy feeling because on stage, I’m standing there–generally in a crowd of progressive people, but there has been many a solider who’s been a listener of mine. There are many of their brothers and sisters standing there. So I don’t want to be disrespectful, and there’s such mass confusion over that slogan and the ways that it’s used. It’s a perilous feeling to say it, for sure.

Earlier in your career, you were hyper-scrutinized by a segment of your fanbase that was very upset that you were in a relationship with a man, upset that you wore a dress, upset that you let the NFL use a song of yours. Have you always had that chorus tuned out–or when you say that you don’t pay attention to it now, is that a reaction to what happened earlier?

A reaction. I think we made one T-shirt ten years ago, our first T-shirt, and immediately got a letter and got a phone call. In some ways, it’s amazing to have thousands of politically aware voices of conscience hanging over my shoulders. In other ways, it’s very claustrophobic, as you can imagine. I think it was ten years ago that I vowed to never read anything about me again. I’m such a healthier person.

I reviewed a book recently that contained commandments for aspiring musicians. A recurring one is that music and politics don’t mix–which isn’t that unusual a sentiment. Carrie Underwood, for example, said recently that music should be an escape from politics, not a place for politics. Where do you think those blanket statements come from?

It seems like it comes from that long, dark Reagan-Bush cultural revolution, in which we’ve been systematically taught–and now we have generations who have grown into this–to be consumers and not citizens. Obama, of course, represents a reinvigoration of that citizenry. The idea that you can separate politics and music is a fallacy. Politics and anything. If you choose to witness injustices around you, and you choose to say nothing and do nothing, that’s a political decision. Everything you sing about has a political angle.